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There's a birthday present for ya!

Amazon just pushed the release date up AGAIN! Now it's supposed to be available on Oct. 11th. Lame.

HUH?!?!? I wonder if they sold out already of their first shipment? I just checked my order status and they're still saying an Oct. 13 delivery date for me.

Now you've got me all paranoid that I should've left my order with Sweetwater.

Monica, I doubt they sold out. Don't know what the problem is.

Got an email from amazon last night: My Q3 has SHIPPED!! Delivery scheduled for the 12th.

Hi,
I just spoke with the vendor who I order the Zoom Q3, he said that it should be shipped by this Firday. Hopefully, I will be able to get a recording for the next recital
Dot

I also ordered one from Amazon.com on Saturday. Oct 19 is the estimated delivery date. Not bad!

I am using Flip camcorder to record, and I can record sound on my DP, so I am not sure why I ordered this new toy, other than it sounds like a very cool one!

Oh boy, oh boy!!

Look what I see when I click on "track packages" in my amazon.com account:


October 12, 2009 11:37:00 AM LEXINGTON KY US Delivered
October 10, 2009 12:09:00 AM LEXINGTON KY US Arrival Scan
October 9, 2009 11:50:00 PM LEXINGTON KY US Arrival Scan
October 9, 2009 09:30:00 PM LEXINGTON KY US Arrival Scan
October 9, 2009 09:29:00 PM LEXINGTON KY US Shipment received by carrier
October 9, 2009 01:38:40 PM Campbellsville KY US Shipment has left seller facility and is in transit

[Must suppress impulse to blow off work the rest of the afternoon and rush to hubby's office to collect new Zoom Q3...]

Cute Monica. Let us know what you think of it. Mine is on hold until others start posting about it.

Actually, Amazon already has some (bogus) reviews from people who haven't even used it yet. I can't believe Amazon allows that.

Oh, I love my Q3. It is so easy to use. And the sound is as good as my H4. I made a video very hastily but ended up deleting it, because the camera angle was bad, and I had cut off half my head and most of my fingers. Even worse, my living room is very dark, as we have only one tiny floor lamp across the room from the piano, so the resulting video was quite dark. I didn't want y'all to think the Q3 had lousy video quality. (Test tapes of my kids in other rooms of the house showed very nice video.)

So I think I will try again in the light of day tomorrow and post something then.

But as a teaser, I will say that the Q3 gets a BIG from me.

I am also waiting for youtube videos, not only of your piano playing, but some action type video.
If I buy one, it will serve as our camcorder for events, birthday parties, etc.

Oh, and Happy Belated B'day, Monica. I appreciate your efforts here at the forum.

A few more random observations: The video editing software that comes bundled with the Q3 is very easy to use, but is quite limited in capability. Basically all you can do is chop off the beginning and end of your videos (which is similar to the software that comes with the Flip). I haven't tried editing the q3 video in MovieMaker yet, but I'm assuming one can do so.

There is apparently a separate formatting procedure you have to go through if you want to use a different (bigger) SD card than what comes supplied. The provided SD card only holds about 45 minutes of video. It's not a big deal, but it's more than just popping the card in the unit. And the instructions are on a separate sheet of paper that comes in the package, so don't throw out any of those loose slips of paper.

The mic input has 3 settings: auto, low, and medium. The auto setting doesn't seem to work the same way as my H4 did (where you have to do a test clip of your loudest portion to adjust the settings), but I was getting some clipping when I put it on auto, so maybe I haven't figured out how to use it right. Setting the gain on "low" worked well for recording piano; for conversation with the kids, I needed it set to "medium."

Cool!

I'm in for buying a H4 or H4n!!

What is the video file type for the Q3 videos? Does it upload to the computer by USB or is there a memory card? I'm in the market for a new video camera, but maybe the Q3 is really more of an audio gadget with video than vice versa.

I definitely need to get something for recording. My new laptop has the world's worst microphone, so recording is out of the question until I make other arrangements.

Nancy

I wonder what the sound quality difference of a HD video camera vs a Q3? When I listen to HD videos on U tube I have no problems with the sound quality for the most part.

Hi Nancy, the Q3 creates video files with the extension .MOV. I had no trouble uploading it to YouTube (though I deleted it as soon as it uploaded given my second thoughts over camera angle and lighting etc.). The Q3 comes with a little USB plug attached to it that you just unfold from the unit and stick in your computer. I'm guessing you could also remove the SD card if you have a card reader installed on your computer already, but that seems more complicated than it needs to be.

I think your assessment that the Q3 is more of an audio gadget is spot-on. This is evident even from the packaging of the Q3; the box has written on the outside, "A little bit of video / A lot of audio."

What I haven't figured out yet is if it's possible to do sound editing to the combined audio/video file. There's an option to let you record just in audio, and I'm guessing (though haven't tried yet) that you can import the audio only file into audacity and do whatever you want there. But I don't know if you can take the video file and do the same thing. This makes me wonder, too, if you can strip the audio off a video file and convert to .mp3 for separate uploading, e.g., for the recitals.

Man I wish I could take two days off to just play around with this thing.

Hello Monica,
If you don't have a Mac, you probably need to convert mov file to avi or mpeg file first. http://download.cnet.com/Pazera-Free-MOV-to-AVI-Converter/3000-2194_4-10798308.html Then you can import it into your windows movie maker.

Hi Monica,

If you do a search for 'AoA audio extractor', you will find a great liitle program for ripping the audio from most video files, to mp3, wav, etc.

Best of all, it is free, and extremely easy to use.

It may be hard to find, so here's the link:
http://www.aoamedia.com/audioextractor.htm

Thanks, Rob and C.Y.! Those conversion programs look really helpful. Whatever I end up doing it's STILL a lot easier than trying to edit the audio onto the Flip video.

That AoA program is very helpful for another reason: Every recital I get at least one question from somebody who has a video file but doesn't know how to convert it to an mp3 for the recital upload. I think I will add this link to the recital instructions from this point on.